NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announced that the personal piano of Carole King, one of the most successful and prolific American singer-songwriters of our time, will be auctioned in New York on April 20 in The Exceptional Sale. King used this 1924 model ‘M’ Steinway piano to compose numerous hits, including Sweet Seasons and Been to Canaan, and it is pictured on the cover of two of her best-selling 1970s albums, Music and Sweet Seasons. The piano is estimated at $40,000 - $60,000 and it will be on view to the public from April 12-20 at Christie’s Rockefeller Galleries.
Becky MacGuire, Head of The Exceptional Sale, comments “It is magical to sit at this instrument that was played and loved for decades by the legendary Carole King, writer and performer of music beloved by generations of listeners.”
Since writing her first number 1 hit Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow at the tender age of 17, Carole King has written or co-written 118 hits on the Billboard Top 100, including (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman, immortalized by Aretha Franklin and You’ve Got a Friend, popularized by James Taylor. Beginning in 1970 King recorded her own music, achieving enormous success as a singer and performer, with lifetime album sales now greater than 75 million. King has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her songwriting. She is the recipient of the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first woman to be so honored, and the musical based on her life and the music of the times, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, is in its 5th smash year on Broadway at the Stephen Sondheim Theater.
From 1971 the piano sat in the living room of Carole King’s house on Appian Way in Laurel Canyon, California – a house often filled with the musicians and friends like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Lou Adler, Betsy and Peter Asher and Toni Stern. In recent decades the piano has graced the personal recording studio of King’s Idaho ranch.
